Corona Devotionals

One of my favorite things to prepare for a trip (airplane or car) is the snack bag(s).  If we are going on a flight, I like to pack little (person-specific) bags, filled with goodies and small things that cannot be opened by the recipient until we are in-flight.  I love the “aha” or “ooooh” moment when they open their bags and are blessed… by me. In the car, the snack bag that I prepare always grows larger than it should with sweet treats, salty items, and homemade goodies that I hope will “hit the spot” with one of our car members.   I want to bless them, but (if I am honest), I also want to be seen as a blessing. Our latest car trip was no different.   Popcorn and peanuts, chex mix, and homemade tropical-fruit scones with orange glaze (can you tell that I am proud of them?) were tucked in my snack bag, ready to rescue the hungry at any mile-marker of our trip.    I was especially excited to “reveal” the scones, and I hoped others would be wowed by th...

I have a friend that lives and dies by the weather channel.   Sun, rain?   Will today be a good day...or a bad day?  Only the meteorologist can tell, and she'll have to turn on the weather station to be told.  Or is there Another who predicts the forecast of our days? Ask the  Lord  for rain in the springtime;  it is the  Lord  who sends the thunderstorms.   He gives showers of rain to all people,  and plants of the field to everyone.  ~Zechariah 10:1 Our Lord...the Creator  of weather brings  the weather.  And we can trust Him and trust in  Him, regardless of whether it is raining or shining.    He is always reigning and shining. ~~ But every one of us have fallen before a false idol before.  We've looked elsewhere instead of God for direction or purpose.  As a young adult, I can recall carefreely stepping out of the sunny bright of a coastal town sidewalk and i...

My husband (and his friends when we are out of town) have been watering our garden religiously and daily and intentionally for many weeks. And...we are beginning to harvest some crops! Today my husband brought a lemon cucumber in from the garden.  It looked a little like an apple, or a tiny gourd, and the seeds inside were large.                                           But when I sliced it up to have with supper...do you know what it tasted like?   A cucumber. And sometimes I buy the long English cucumbers from the store, when I want to slice up cukes for salads or vegetable trays.   These cucumbers look nothing like the orb-shaped lemon cucumbers: instead, they are long and thin, and their seeds are tiny. But when I slice them up...do you know what they taste like?   Cucumbers. And once in a while, I will purchase mini-...

The very last book of the Bible: Revelation. We can admit (confess!) that we cannot explain much of what we read in its verses. We don't fully understand, and we can't fully comprehend Revelation ...until the prophecies within it come to pass one day. We don't understand exactly who the great prostitute is ( Revelation 17:1 ). We cannot explain who the woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns is ( Revelation 17:1 ). We can agree with John, the author of Revelation , when he writes in Revelation 17:5 that the name written on her forehead was a mystery : babylon the great the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth . We definitely don't understand what most of that means. We are also probably not sure how to interpret or understand the beast on which the woman rides which has the seven heads and ten horns (Revelation 17:7) . We are not uneducated or ignorant, and yet we cannot fu...

 If we spend any amount of time outside the walls of our home, or even inside...but watching the news or scrolling online, we eventually sense the darkness that sin has draped over this world.  Pain, violence, sadness, sickness, disillusion, and even the blatant denial of God are realities not only in the world, but in people. Sometimes it is so heavy, we seek escape.  We seek a place of safety. On a busy downtown street recently, we passed a street vendor with wall art displayed.  Each of the paintings was wild with color and shaky in lines and design, so as to represent/replicate/remind the viewer of being under the influence of a substance while viewing the "art".   The (many!) paintings made me sad, and then mad.   And at the end of the display of paintings sat (what looked to be) a homeless man.  He chattered loudly to no one that I could see.  And when we passed his area, he looked straight at me and asked me if I was a bird? ...